As August is high holiday time in Europe and also a time for vacations on Wall Street, the recent gyrations in the global financial markets have occurred when many of those that play the game were soaking up the sun in their favorite beach getaway.  This story from the Financial Times talks about a few folks who used their Blackberry’s as their "financial lifeline" as events unfolded and credit them with not having to cut their holidays short to rush back to the office.

Obviously emotions are running high and the stakes are huge so one can only guess at the contents of these discussions.  The ability to quickly message back and forth creates a nice record as each of these emails gets neatly stored into a firm’s email archive (at least in the US in compliance with SEC 17a-4).  One can only imagine what will be uncovered as the litigation heats up and e-discovery requests come rolling in.  Maybe not a wise idea to send emails after a few margaritas?